Law Week: Spotlight on Circle Green’s Impactful Law Reform Work

We are also busy engaging in:

1. Community Legal Education: providing information sessions, resources, and training to raise community awareness of the law and legal processes related to our practice areas; and

2. Law Reform: advocating for access to justice and a fairer justice system.

This article is about law reform: what it is, why it is important, and the kind of law reform work we do.

What is law reform, and why is it important?

Community Legal WA, the peak body for community legal centres in WA, notes that ‘when laws are not working well it often hits the most disadvantaged communities the hardest’.

To us, law reform is about trying to make the justice system more accessible to and appropriate for our client base, which is largely made up of people from marginalised and disadvantaged communities.  Our law reform and advocacy work is directly informed by our clients’ experiences, and we draw on our expertise in providing legal assistance services to people who are marginalised or disadvantaged in our areas of practice.

“As person-centred, responsive and independent community organisations, CLCs and FVPLS are well positioned to improve access to justice through advocacy for law and policy reform. They see first-hand where our laws and policies are not working well and where there are particularly unfair and costly impacts on people experiencing disadvantage. This is a key strength of CLCs and it is important this expertise is harnessed to inform the development of new legislation and policy responses and the review of existing laws and policies.” (Community Legal WA submission to Independent NLAP Review )

We use this client feedback and our own observations from our client work to identify specific ways in which the current laws are not working and think how they could be improved.  We then bring this to the attention of law and policymakers through submissions to inquiries and reviews, requests for feedback, and by selective advocacy work alone and in partnership with our fellow agencies in the community legal sector.

Circle Green’s law reform work

Our law reform work follows the priorities set out in our 2022-2025 Strategic Plan. One of the focus areas of the Strategic Plan is visible social impact: to amplify our organisation as a critical piece of the solution for creating social change in people’s lives and in sector-wide legal reform.

We often collaborate with other organisations in the sector, across the state as well as nationally, to deliver law reform and advocacy work.

Keep reading below to see what our Workplace and Tenancy Streams have been doing as part of our law reform work

Workplace

As the lead agency for the Workplace Respect Project, a Commonwealth Government-funded response to the Respect@Work Report, one of our key areas for reform is workplace sexual harassment laws and processes.

Circle Green is a proud member of the Power to Prevent Coalition, which is a group of more than 85 diverse community organisations, unions, academics, peak bodies, health professionals, lawyers, and victim-survivors. Coalition members see the effects of discrimination and sexual harassment on people, and the barriers they face in seeking justice, every day.

One of those barriers is the significant cost of legal advice and the risk of a legal costs order. Costs orders are routinely made to require an unsuccessful party to pay some or all of the successful party’s legal fees. These fees commonly run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and the threat of a costs order is a powerful deterrent to people considering making a legal claim following an incident of sexual harassment or related conduct.

Circle Green, and other members of the Power to Prevent Coalition, made submissions in early 2023 to an Attorney-General Department review considering different cost models for Commonwealth anti-discrimination laws. Circle Green’s submission, which you can read here, provided views on different options and the ways they would or would not work for our clients. The submission also included several case studies to illustrate the deterrent effect of the current costs model.  In late 2023 the Australian Human Rights Commission Amendment (Costs Protection) Bill 2023 was introduced into parliament and sought to significantly reduce the risk of a costs order for an applicant.  This makes discrimination claims a much more viable option for those who are financially disadvantaged and marginalised. The proposed reforms were wholeheartedly supported by the Power to Prevent Coalition and remain before the House of Representatives.

In 2021 Circle Green Community Legal also made an extensive submission to a review by the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia of the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (WA).  Our submission was quoted extensively in the final report, and our clients’ case studies were used to highlight the realities of their experience considering and making discrimination claims.

Tenancy

WA is in the midst of a housing and homelessness crisis, with rental vacancy rates consistently below 1%, average rents around $650 per week, and a public housing waitlist more than 20,000 people long. While there is not silver bullet solution for addressing these issues, adequate and contemporary tenancy legislation is a key component of homelessness prevention.

Circle Green is a core member of the Make Renting Fair alliance, a coalition of service providers, peak bodies, and other stakeholders, working towards safe, secure, and healthy homes for the 1 in 3 West Australians who rent. As part of the Make Renting Fair alliance, Circle Green has been advocating for a number of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1987 (WA) to improve protections for tenants. Among other things, we are asking for an end to ‘no grounds’ evictions, an introduction of rent stabilisation measures, and the implementation of minimum standards for all rental properties. While this work is still ongoing, the first tranche of reforms were passed in April 2024, and we look forward to seeing these provisions come into effect in the coming months.

Another key area for reform is public housing policy and practice. Public housing tenants are some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our community, and there are many policies and practices that can both directly and indirectly perpetuate this disadvantage. We are working on two test cases currently before the Supreme Court, to challenge the Housing Authority’s use of fixed-term tenancies and ‘no grounds’ evictions against public housing tenants. This practice is inherently unfair, it allows for eviction (usually into homelessness) without the Housing Authority having to substantiate a reason, and without giving the tenant any right to have all the circumstances considered by a Magistrate. Aboriginal people are disproportionately impacted by this practice, making up just 3% of the population, but nearly 25% of public housing tenancies and a staggering 58% of fixed-term tenancies.

We will continue to push for change in these and other areas, as we work towards a better and fairer deal for all WA renters.

View the list of submissions made by Circle Green Community Legal here.